Victor Gaviria (Rodrigo D, No Futuro) directed this drama of street kids in Colombia, a modernization of Hans Christian Andersen's
The Little Match Girl focusing on 13-year-old Monica (Leidy Tabares) who sells roses to couples in nightspots. Smoking pot and sniffing glue, Monica hangs out with other street runaways and her dealer boyfriend. During a drug fantasy, she hallucinates about her dead grandmother. When 10-year-old Andrea (Mileider Gil) gets a beating, she runs out on her mother and steals her sister's inline skates for cash, but she eventually rejects life on the street and returns home. A hand-held camera moves through the nighttime streets where the glitter of Christmas decorations and an illuminated Madonna stand amid the squalor and poverty. Shown in competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide